Heavy vehicle safety workshops being run

Friday 18 May 2018

The Australian Forestry Contractors Association (AFCA) will host its next round of safety workshops for forestry workers in regional NSW, Victoria and South Australia. The NHVR has joined forces with AFCA, providing funding for the Forestry Logistics Safety Program under the Heavy Vehicle Safety Initiative.

NHVR Stakeholder Manager John Gilbert said it is imperative Australia’s forestry workers have a safe environment and the training is providing much-needed support and advice, particularly in relation to truck rollovers. “These workshops provide crucial information on load restraint, key impacts on vehicle stability when transporting forestry products and emerging technologies in this high-risk industry,” Mr Gilbert said.

“Training can make all the difference in keeping safety at the forefront of people’s thinking about how they carry out their work and NHVR is keen to support the initiative.”

AFCA has developed the workshop content in partnership with expert load restraint engineering consultants, Engistics to address forestry specific haulage challenges such as load restraint and managing truck rollover using static rollover threshold. Workshops have already been delivered in Albany and Bridgetown in Western Australia and Caloundra, Gympie and Dalby in Queensland, and Tasmania attracting more than 150 industry stakeholders across the supply chain.

“The sessions also cover chain of responsibility and proposed changes to the law, recent load restraint research and testing, rollovers and incident investigation findings including who is responsible when things go wrong.
The sessions are aimed at all supply chain members who have a role or influence in the forestry haulage task and can influence the Chain of Responsibility obligations under the Heavy Vehicle National Law".

This includes forest management companies and their staff, forestry contracting businesses, and operators who load wood, truck drivers, workers who schedule the task and unload the wood and processors who accept wood from trucks.

A two-yearly tech update, WoodFlow 2018 for all those involved in wood transportation, log measurement and tracking, wood planning, scheduling and logistics has also been set up for Melbourne, Australia on 20-21 June with two free workshops to event delegates running on the afternoon of Tuesday 19 June. Full details can be found on www.woodflow.events.